When Kenyan warships eased into the blue-green harbour of Port Victoria, they carried with them a marker in the long calendar of Indian Ocean naval history: it was the first time the Kenya Navy had ever made a formal port call at the Seychellois capital.
The arrival, announced as part of Exercise JITEGEMEE XXVII, came at the close of the sea phase of Leg One of an extended training cruise and a concurrent live operation — Operation Bahari Moja 01 — conducted jointly with the Seychelles Air Force. For Kenyan officers and sailors who had spent weeks at sea in the demanding conditions of the Western Indian Ocean, the sight of Victoria Harbour was both a relief and a turning point.
“This port call is not simply a waypoint on a training schedule,” one senior officer said shortly after berthing. “It is a statement of intent — Kenya’s intent to be an active, capable, and dependable maritime partner in this region.”
An intensive sea phase forges battle-ready sailors
The voyage to the Seychelles was no ceremonial cruise. Throughout the passage, officers and sailors undertook a comprehensive curriculum of evolutions designed to stress-test individual and collective competencies. Crews drilled in astronavigation — the centuries-old art of fixing position by the stars — alongside thoroughly modern exercises: man overboard drills, emergency steering procedures, general weapons handling, Officer of the Watch manoeuvres, firefighting, and a full spectrum of seamanship routines.
The exercises were not conducted in a vacuum. Under Operation Bahari Moja, the Kenyan task unit simultaneously maintained operational dominance across its assigned Area of Operations, interrogating multiple contacts in accordance with maritime law, positively identifying vessels and methodically building patterns and trends across an expansive maritime domain. The dual nature of the deployment — training cruise by day, live maritime operation by standing watch — reflected a broader doctrine: that professional development and operational readiness are not sequential goals but simultaneous ones.
Once alongside in Port Victoria, the learning did not pause. Crew members sharpened their Visit, Board, Search and Seizure then VBSS skills aboard KNS Shupavu during Exercise Cutlass Express 2026, a multinational engagement designed to boost interoperability and boarding proficiency among Indian Ocean partner navies. Officers also participated in a regional maritime operation, gaining exposure to real-time security dynamics that no classroom exercise can fully replicate.
“The interdiction of one tonne of methamphetamine was a clear demonstration of what cooperation, timely intelligence, and Seychelles’ force-multiplying surveillance capabilities can achieve.”
— Lt. Col. Job Gitonga, Commanding Officer, KNS Jasiri
Naval diplomacy at the highest level
The task unit arrival in Victoria triggered a carefully choreographed round of naval diplomacy. Lieutenant Colonel Job Gitonga, Commanding Officer of KNS Jasiri, led a courtesy call on Brigadier General Jean Attala, Deputy Chief of the Seychelles Defence Forces. He was accompanied by the Roman Catholic Chaplain, Lieutenant Colonel (Fr.) Dalmas Simiyu; the Commanding Officer of KNS Shupavu, Major Emmanuel Etoot; and Major Kennedy Kimundi, International Liaison Officer to the Regional Coordination and Operations Centre then RCOC.
The discussions were candid and substantive. Both sides underscored the strategic importance of securing the sea lanes of communication then SLOCs that thread through the Western Indian Ocean. For an archipelago nation whose economy depends on maritime access, those lanes are, as Brigadier General Attala put it, a vital daily necessity. His gratitude for Kenya patrol presence was unambiguous.
Lieutenant Colonel Gitonga used the occasion to convey a personal message of appreciation from Major General Paul Otieno, Commander Kenya Navy, to the Seychelles Defence Forces. The message cited a specific and telling example of what bilateral cooperation can achieve: during Operation Bahari Safi, Seychellois maritime surveillance support contributed directly to the interdiction of one tonne of methamphetamine — a haul that underscored just how consequential coordinated intelligence-sharing can be across this vast and porous ocean frontier.
Operation Bahari Moja — key facts
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- Conducted jointly by the Kenya Navy and Seychelles Air Force
- Formed the sea phase of Exercise JITEGEMEE XXVII, Leg One
- Included live maritime law enforcement across the Area of Operations
- Complemented by Exercise Cutlass Express 2026 in-port training
- Supported Kenya role as Chair of Djibouti Code of Conduct Working Group 3
Building the architecture of regional security
Beyond the bilateral courtesies, the port call served a longer institutional purpose. Junior Officers Under Training then JOUTs accompanied their commanding officers on familiarisation visits to the RCOC and the National Information Sharing and Coordination Centre then NISCC. These are the nerve centres of Indian Ocean maritime domain awareness: facilities where radar tracks, vessel identification data, and intelligence reports are fused into an operational picture shared across multiple national boundaries.
For young Kenyan officers, many of whom will one day serve as the architects of their own country’s maritime security policy, the visits offered something rare — a ground-level view of how collective governance of a shared ocean actually functions. The exposure carries particular significance given that Kenya currently chairs Working Group 3 of the Djibouti Code of Conduct and its Jeddah Amendment, the principal legal and operational framework governing counter-piracy and maritime crime cooperation across the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden.
The work of that working group, and Kenya leadership of it, is not abstract. It translates directly into coordinated patrol schedules, shared intelligence protocols, and joint interdiction operations — the kind of operational architecture that, on a single patrol, already yielded a tonne of narcotics removed from circulation.
While the strategic engagements unfolded in conference rooms and operations centres, the Kenya Navy also tended to the human dimension of its mission. Personnel were granted organised tours of the island — an archipelago celebrated globally for its ecotourism, its Creole coastal culture, and its remarkable ecological biodiversity. A friendly rugby match against the Seychelles Rugby Team added a competitive, collegial note to the goodwill agenda. In keeping with the oldest traditions of naval hospitality, the Senior Officer Afloat hosted a formal “Request the Pleasure of Your Company” reception aboard KNS Jasiri — attended by senior Seychellois government officials, Kenya non-resident Defence Attaché to Seychelles, Colonel Louis Wataka, members of the local Kenyan community, and officers from the Seychelles Defence Forces.
What the reception symbolised, and what the entire port call embodied, was the substance behind the phrase “naval diplomacy” — the idea that professional militaries, exercising together, visiting together, and working together, can build the trust that formal treaties alone cannot manufacture.
For the Kenya Navy, the first call at Port Victoria was many things simultaneously: the successful close of a demanding operational leg, a milestone in bilateral relations with a key Indian Ocean island partner, and a visible assertion of Kenya growing ambition and capacity as a maritime power. Whether one measures it in tonnes of narcotics seized, officers trained, or diplomatic handshakes exchanged, the message carried into Victoria Harbour by KNS Jasiri and KNS Shupavu was consistent and deliberate — Kenya is here, Kenya is capable, and Kenya intends to stay engaged.
